A washing machine is configured to remove contaminants from laundry by applying energy, e.g. water current, to the laundry, and the washing machine may be classified into a pulsator washing machine, an agitator washing machine and a drum washing machine depending on a method of applying the energy to the laundry.
The pulsator washing machine is configured to perform a washing using a water current by a rotation of a pulsator in a disc shape, the agitator washing machine is configured to perform a washing by rotating a wing-shaped agitator, which is protruded in the center of a washing tub, rightward and leftward, and the drum washing machine is configured to perform a wash by applying an impact by falling the laundry by the rotation of the drum.
The washing machine performs a wash cycle of washing laundry with water containing dissolved detergent, a rinse cycle of washing the laundry with clean water, which does not contain detergent, and a spin cycle of removing water from the laundry.
The washing machine includes a detergent supply unit provided in an upper portion thereof so that detergent is supplied with supplied water during water is supplied to the tub.
The detergent supply unit is built in a front surface unit of the upper portion of the body of the washing machine, and the detergent supply unit includes an accommodation unit formed in the front surface of the body and a detergent container in a withdraw shape and mounted to be inserted into the inside of the body.
The detergent container is divided into a plurality of regions so that a user inputs detergents by classifying the type of the detergent. The detergent container may have a difficulty in the usability in that a user should input a detergent required for the wash every time.
Further, since the detergent container is configured to be withdrawn frontward in the upper portion of the body, it may cause inconvenience to operating an operation panel disposed in the upper portion of the body and it may have a bad influence on the exterior of the washing machine.
Therefore, recently, the washing machine has been equipped with a detergent automatic supply unit so that the detergent is automatically supplied during the wash.
In order to clean the detergent container of the detergent automatic supply unit, it is required that the detergent container is separated from the accommodation unit of the body. However, since the detergent container is not easily separated from the accommodation unit because the detergent container is movably fixed to the inside of the accommodation unit, and since a user is required to put his/her hand to the inside of the accommodation unit to remove foreign materials and residual water by using a rag, after separating the detergent container from the accommodation unit, it is not easy to remove the foreign material and residual water, and thus it is very difficult to clean the detergent automatic supply unit.
In addition, when the detergent automatic supply unit is not cleaned for long time, there may be a possibility of second contaminant due to the decomposition of the foreign material and as a result, there is a problem that the reliability of the product is also reduced
Further, it may cause an unnecessary cost when asking a service for cleaning the detergent automatic supply unit.